The MacArthur Foundation announced their latest group of 21 Fellows (recipients of $625,000 grants), including graphic novelist Alison Bechdel, poet Terrance Hayes, translator/poet Khaled Mattawa, and playwright Samuel Hunter. The National Book Awards also announced their nonfiction longlist Wednesday. (Notably, the nominees include only one woman; the young people’s literature and poetry longlists were evenly divided between male and female authors.) Roz Chast, Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? (Bloomsbury) John Demos, The Heathen School: A Story of Hope and Betrayal in the Age of the Early Republic (Knopf) Anand Gopal, No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban, and […]
Archives for September 2014
People, Etc.
Abrams will launch a new gift and stationery imprint, Abrams Noterie, in February 2015. The line, which launches with four product collections and two journals, will comprise guided and blank journals, notecards, postcards, desk accessories, small gift books, and other inventive paper product formats. Overseeing Abrams Noterie is Karrie Witkin, who has the new role of editorial director, gift and paper products. (She has worked at Potter Craft and Metropolitan Museum of Art.) The creative team includes associate art director Hana Nakamura, who was at Mucca Design. CEO Michael Jacobs says in the announcement, “The addition of a stationery and gift imprint is […]
Longlists: Giller Prize, National Book Award Poetry
Canada’s Giller Prize announced their longlist of twelve books: Arjun Basu, Waiting for the Man (ECW Press) David Bezmogzis, The Betrayers (Little, Brown/Harper Canada) Rivka Galchen, American Innovations (FSG/Harper Canada) Frances Itani, Tell (Black Cat (forthcoming)/Harper Canada) Jennifer Lovegrove, Watch How We Walk (ECW Press) Sean Michaels, Us Conductors (Tin House/RH Canada) Shani Mootoo, Moving Forward Sideways Like a Crab (Doubleday Canada) Heather O’Neill, The Girl Who Was Saturday Night (FSG/Harper Canada) Kathy Page, Paradise and Elsewhere (Biblioasis) Claire Holden Rothman, My October (Penguin Canada) Miriam Toews, All My Puny Sorrows (McSweeney’s/Knopf Canada) Padma Viswanathan, The Ever After of Ashwin […]
European Court Approves Lower Taxes for eBooks; Management Buyout At Book People
Long after Luxembourg and France decided for themselves, the European Court has ruled that it really is ok for individual countries to charge lower Value Added Tax rates on ebooks. Reduced VAT was always allowed on printed books, but the statute never mentioned ebooks — which most countries took to mean that ebooks had to be charged normal, full VAT. Luxembourg was the notable exception, turning it into the server farm for digital media in Europe, and then France joined in more recently. The court came to the clarifying decision in a case brought by Finland over the difference between print […]
People
Publisher of the Red Wheel/Weiser imprints since November 2000 Jan Johnson is stepping aside from day-to-day management responsibilities to become publisher emerita. Johnson says, “I’ve worked in book publishing since 1972, which kind of seems like the dark ages now. There have been so many exciting and unforeseeable changes over the past four decades. I’m looking forward to discovering new ways of doing things and finding new projects to pursue.” President Michael Kerber “will be taking a more direct role in the publishing program, along with Caroline Pincus and Greg Brandenburgh, associate publishers, who will continue and expand their roles […]
People, Etc.
Douglas Preston’s Authors United is taking their complaints over Amazon’s negotiation tactics with Hachette to the etailer’s board of directors, which accomplishes the primary goal of putting authors’ objections back in the headlines. The new letter notes: “Russell Grandinetti of Amazon has stated that the company was ‘forced to take this step because Hachette refused to come to the table.’ He has also claimed that ‘authors are the only leverage we have.’ …Amazon was not ‘forced’ to do anything. This is an obvious fact. We all have choices. Amazon chose to involve 2,500 Hachette authors and their books. It could […]